Chapter 21
Landon and his merry band of Citadel hunters lead us past the armory and through the locked gates of Old Campus.
If I still gave a shit about what people at Harker thought of me, I’d be grateful Deacon and I are being escorted across the campus in iron chains at one in the morning when there’s nobody around to see.
At the precipice of the Fickle Thicket, another litany of Citadel hunters allows us through.
“Why do so many guards man this forest?” I ask. “Just because the Citadel is in here?”
Landon turns to respond, but Deacon beats him to it. “They care more about keeping things in than keeping students out.”
“There are all kinds of lowborn deviant creatures crawling around here that the Citadel doesn’t eliminate,” Landon says, eyes on the path ahead.
“Too much of a risk of harming some of the rare magical flora, fauna, and lymantrians that call these woods home. Students aren’t allowed here, and mortals can’t access it…
” Landon shrugs. “The Elders feel the deviants are best left undisturbed.”
Yeah, because they’re deviants themselves, I think. I’m pretty sure these chains are soaked in yarrow—an herb that can temporarily decrease a hunter’s abilities. That and the vodka are not making for such a graceful trudge through the woods.
“The forest isn’t so much a part of Harker as it is the property of the Elders,” Deacon muses.
“Like a wildlife preserve,” Landon says pointedly.
Deacon snorts. “Or like Columbus and Indigenous land.”
He’s terrifyingly calm. I know he’s strong enough to break free of the chains, but he allows himself to stay restrained because I asked him to trust me.
The night grows colder. The grass and twigs and snow less tramped down.
The guards lead us past a significantly gnarled oak I remember seeing on the way to the Citadel with Fiona.
The lights of the palace windows glow in the distance through the dense tree cover.
I’m certain that’s where Landon is dragging us.
I’ve come up with a mere skeleton of a plan but will need a lot of luck to pull it off. I wriggle to get a feel for the tightness of the yarrow-soaked chains. Not moveable. But that’s okay. I’m decently flexible.
Letting myself fall to the back of the pack, I fish the fragment of Dawnmere’s wing out of my thigh holster where Hellion is usually sheathed.
I slip both hands under my dress and press the fragment to the base of the scar at my tailbone.
Once more, I smell sunshine and lilacs. I heave a sigh of mild, temperate relief.
I don’t know what Landon plans to do, but all I can hope is that the fairy’s wing is strong enough to conceal what I am.
Newts and frogs leap out of our way as we’re led even deeper into the forest. My nose fills with the woodsy scent of mushrooms and moss.
When a phone buzzes in Landon’s pocket, my eyes whip to Deacon.
Mine’s rung a handful of times now, unanswered since Landon took our phones and my blades.
Probably calls from my friends, panicking because the party is dwindling and I’m nowhere to be found.
That’s bad news in any Saturday night college scenario.
It’s catastrophic when I’m carrying the syrabraxa beneath my spine.
But this buzz is unfamiliar to me. Deacon’s phone.
“You’ll want me to answer that,” he drawls. “The kind of people who’ll come after me…” Deacon releases a low, ominous whistle.
“Nobody a Citadel hunter can’t handle,” Landon says. When he turns to me, there’s judgment in his eyes. “And here I’d thought you were still pining for your demon instructor. But you’ve been screwing around behind his back with some fourth-year?”
I don’t respond. Landon still believes Deacon is just another hunter I was caught with in the watchtower and surely is disappointed by his cool compliance and lack of fear. Landon is the same ego-driven guy who made Sophia and me run laps for speaking while he was speaking.
“Don’t,” I warn under my breath as we’re shoved past a copse of elms. Something growls in the bushes. Yellow insect eyes glow.
“Don’t what?”
“You know what,” I whisper. Massacre. Mayhem. The end of days. “I told you to trust me.”
He thrusts his chained wrists in my direction. “What does it look like I’m doing?” His voice lowers an octave, deep and chilling. “But they’re going to kill you, Vivienne. As soon as they find out what you are.”
He’s right. The Elders had my kind eliminated to avoid this very scenario—a syrabraxa getting into the wrong hands. Killing me will be the only course of action when Landon proves I’m an aeon imbued with the spell.
“If you attack them…” There’s no way whatever blood deal Deacon has with the Elders can protect him if he slaughters Citadel hunters on Harker grounds.
They’d come after Fever Dream. And then Deacon’s deviants would retaliate…
come after Harker and its students. Wouldn’t be long until the Brood took a side… “You could cause a war.”
“You think I fear war?” he breathes. “I was made for war.”
And as I behold him—the cruel, moon-white hair; the rugged, brutal jaw; the way the unforgiving wind pelts all of us mercilessly but seems to avoid him altogether—I know what he means. Deacon is a work of art in the same way the atom bomb is.
“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t hurt anyone. I have a plan.”
“So you keep saying.”
We’re dragged through the woods and brought to a moonlit clearing. All I’ve put together now that the alcohol has left my system—thank you hunter metabolism—and taken my bloodlust swell with it is that this is not the Citadel.
In the clearing lies a pool, surrounded by weeping wisteria trees with flowers as vivid violet as if it were springtime.
The frigid, windy night is reflected in the water, black and glittering like slick oil.
But iridescent lotus and crocus blooms cast the surrounding sunset-colored flowers in an otherworldly glow.
Landon pushes Deacon and me nearer, and our feet begin to slosh as the dirt of the thicket grows wet and verdant.
Lush and mossy and overgrown. In the pool, three heads bob up from the water.
“Fair ones,” Landon says in greeting. “I’ve brought you two sinners for cleansing.”
Deacon’s voice is a razor slicing through the night. “Cleansing?”
My pulse begins to pound with dread. We’re not going to the Citadel at all. Landon had said the Elders needed proof. That’s what we’re here for.
“Show us the darkness inside of them,” Landon tells the three forms bobbing in the water.
Veiled in shadow, one figure wades forward and stills beneath the lustrous glow of a drooping blossom.
She’s humanlike, but there’s nothing mortal about the narrow slit of her glowing irises, the translucent pallor of her skin, or the dark waves of her hair.
“Who do you bring to us?” Her voice is a whisper that curls softly against my ear and sends terror into my heart.
“A hunter. Fourth-year, I believe.” Landon clears his throat. “What is your name—”
“Not him,” another figure from the black lake hisses. Buzzing fireflies paint her long, slick green hair in whizzing pools of golden light. “Who is the girl?”
Landon pushes me forward. “Vivienne Abbot.”
“It’s Viv,” Deacon growls at him.
The three soaked women converse in whispers, sending waves across the water. Frogs hop from lily pads in their wake, and I catch a glimpse of pointed ears and a flash of pearly, fanged canines. But no vibration beneath my skin. Whatever these beings are, they’re not deviants.
“Bring them to us,” the first demands, abandoning the others.
Though the glassy water—black as coal but rippling with streaks of the moon’s pale reflection—is opaque and covers her below the shoulders, I’m sure she’s naked.
A creature like this…too rare, too holy, too violent to understand the idea of shame. She is of another world.
Landon moves for Deacon’s chains, but he swipes away his wrists in a blink. “Not so fast, bucko.”
Landon lunges and gets his jagged hunting knife against Deacon’s throat. The sight of that silver—moonlight glinting off each pointed notch and tooth—so close to Deacon’s skin turns my blood to solid ice.
“Don’t,” I gasp.
“You better not be talking to me,” Deacon grunts, the silver blistering the skin of his neck. I’m lucky it’s too dark for Landon to see.
“Listen to me, fourth-year—”
“We’ll cooperate,” I manage. “I have nothing to hide. I’m not your aeon. Please. We’ll go in the water.”
“So the Mer can have a compliant dinner?” Deacon snaps. “Hard pass.”
Mer. Of course—they’re mermaids. I’ve only ever seen drawings because the lymantrian creatures haven’t been photographed by more than a curious human or two who thought they found Nessie.
I try to recall everything I’ve learned about the Mer in record time and come up with only melodic and carnivore.
Not useful. Where is Peter when you need him?
“They won’t hurt us,” I tell Deacon. “They’re lymantrians.”
“You’re a lymantrian,” he says. “You try to hurt me once a week.”
“Don’t fight them, okay? It’s going to be fine.”
Landon gives him a strange look before removing his knife from Deacon’s neck and sheathing it. I release a steady exhale, just as Landon’s hunters remove our chains and force Deacon and me into the depthless lagoon.
The minute the water hits my skin—seeping into my tights, sluicing between my toes inside my boots—a serenity overtakes me. Not like drugs or booze or the calm of a dreamless sleep. But something deeper. More poignant. A quieting of my very soul.
The third mermaid, one with a long, thick braid down her back woven with reeds and wet, silky flowers, drags me deeper into the lagoon until the water is up to my shoulders.
We drift farther and farther from Landon and his men, who stand at the edge, watching.
She motions for me to remove my shoes, which I do.
The thick leather boots sink down, down, down.